Friday, September 9, 2011

"...the volume of gold traded in London is ten times what is implied by the clearing statistics: 10.9bn ounces of gold, worth $15,200bn, changed hands in the first quarter of this year, according to the LBMA’s estimate.

"...That is 125 times the annual output of the world’s gold mines – and twice the quantity of gold that has ever been mined.

"...The 10.9bn figure compares to 1.2bn ounces of gold trades that were cleared – in other words, only a tenth of gold traded on the London market is cleared. About 1.2bn ounces were traded in the form of Comex futures in the same period.

"...The vast majority of the trading – roughly 90 per cent – was in the spot market, rather than forwards, options or swaps.
"...the $240bn average daily turnover in the London bullion market is higher than the global daily turnover of any currency pair except for the dollar/euro, dollar/yen, dollar/sterling and dollar/Aussie dollar, according to the most recent Bank for International Settlements survey

The dollar/Swiss franc, that other great safe haven trade, is worth a mere $168bn a day."